I would like to outline the importance attached by high [Nazi] officials to
respect the desire and maintain the good will of "Ford," and by
"Ford" I mean your father, yourself, and the Ford Motor Company,
Dearborn. (Josiah E.
Dubois, Jr, Generals in Grey Suits, London: The Bodley Head, 1953, p.
250.)

Henry Ford is often seen to be something of an enigma among the Wall Street
elite. For many years in the 20s and 30s Ford was popularly known as an enemy
of the financial establishment. Ford accused Morgan and others of using war
and revolution as a road to profit and their influence in social systems as a
means of personal advancement. By 1938 Henry Ford, in his public statements,
had divided financiers into two classes: those who profited from war and used
their influence to bring about war for profit, and the
"constructive" financiers. Among the latter group he now included
the House of Morgan. During a 1938 New York Times interview1 Ford
averred that:

Somebody once said
that sixty families have directed the destinies of the nation. It might well
be said that if somebody would focus the spotlight on twenty-five persons
who handle the nation's finances, the world's real warmakers would be brought
into bold relief.

The Times reporter
asked Ford how he equated this assessment with his long-standing criticism of
the House of Morgan, to which Ford replied:

There is a
constructive and a destructive Wall Street. The House of Morgan represents
the constructive. I have known Mr. Morgan for many years. He backed and
supported Thomas Edison, who was also my good friend ....

After expounding on the
evils of limited agricultural production — allegedly brought about by Wall
Street — Ford continued,

... if these
financiers had their way we'd be in a war now. They want war because they
make money out of such conflict — out of the human misery that wars bring.

On the other hand,
when we probe behind these public statements we find that Henry Ford and son
Edsel Ford have been in the forefront of American businessmen who try to walk
both sides of every ideological fence in search of profit. Using Ford's own
criteria, the Fords are among the "destructive" elements.

It was Henry Ford who
in the 1930s built the Soviet Union's first modern automobile plant (located
at Gorki) and which in the 50s and 60s produced the trucks used by the North
Vietnamese to carry weapons and munitions for use against Americans.2 At about
the same time, Henry Ford was also the most famous of Hitler's foreign
backers, and he was rewarded in the 1930s for this long-lasting support with
the highest Nazi decoration for foreigners.

This Nazi favor
aroused a storm of controversy in the United States and ultimately degenerated
into an exchange of diplomatic notes between the German Government and the
State Department. While Ford publicly protested that he did not like
totalitarian governments, we find in practice that Ford knowingly profited
from both sides of World War II — from French and German plants producing
vehicles at a profit for the Wehrmacht, and from U.S. plants building vehicles
at a profit for the U.S. Army.

Henry Ford's
protestations of innocence suggest, as we shall see in this chapter, that he
did not approve of Jewish financiers profiting from war (as some have), but if
anti-Semitic Morgan3 and Ford profited from war that was acceptable, moral and
"constructive."

On December 20, 1922
the New York Times reported4 that automobile manufacturer Henry Ford
was financing Adolph Hitler's nationalist and anti-Semitic movements in
Munich. Simultaneously, the Berlin newspaper Berliner Tageblatt appealed
to the American Ambassador in Berlin to investigate and halt Henry Ford's
intervention into German domestic affairs. It was reported that Hitler's
foreign backers had furnished a "spacious headquarters" with a
"host of highly paid lieutenants and officials." Henry Ford's
portrait was prominently displayed on the walls of Hitler's personal office:

The wall behind his
desk in Hitler's private office is decorated with a large picture of Henry
Ford. In the antechamber there is a large table covered with books, nearly
all of which are a translation of a book written and published by Henry
Ford.5

The same New York
Times report commented that the previous Sunday Hitler had reviewed,

The so-called
Storming Battalion.., 1,000 young men in brand new uniforms and armed with
revolvers and blackjacks, while Hitler and his henchmen drove around in two
powerful brand-new autos.

The Times made
a clear distinction between the German monarchist parties and Hitler's
anti-Semitic fascist party. Henry Ford, it was noted, ignored the Hohenzollern
monarchists and put his money into the Hitlerite revolutionary movement.

These Ford funds were
used by Hitler to foment the Bavarian rebellion. The rebellion failed, and
Hitler was captured and subsequently brought to trial. In February 1923 at the
trial, vice president Auer of the Bavarian Diet testified:

The Bavarian Diet
has long had the information that the Hitler movement was partly financed by
an American anti-Semitic chief, who is Henry Ford. Mr. Ford's interest in
the Bavarian anti-Semitic movement began a year ago when one of Mr. Ford's
agents, seeking to sell tractors, came in contact with Diedrich Eichart, the
notorious Pan-German. Shortly after, Herr Eichart asked Mr. Ford's agent for
financial aid. The agent returned to America and immediately Mr. Ford's
money began coming to Munich.

Herr Hitler openly
boasts of Mr. Ford's support and praises Mr. Ford as a great individualist
and a great anti-Semite. A photograph of Mr. Ford hangs in Herr Hitler's
quarters, which is the center of monarchist movement.6

Hitler received a
mild and comfortable prison sentence for his Bavarian revolutionary
activities. The rest from more active pursuits enabled him to write Mein
Kampf. Henry Ford's book, The International Jew, earlier circulated
by the Nazis, was translated by them into a dozen languages, and Hitler
utilized sections of the book verbatim in writing Mein
Kampf.7

We shall see later
that Hitler's backing in the late 20s and early 30s came from the chemical,
steel, and electrical industry cartels, rather than directly from individual
industrialists. In 1928 Henry Ford merged his German assets with those of the
I.G. Farben chemical cartel. A substantial holding, 40 percent of Ford Motor
A.G. of Germany, was transferred to I.G. Farben; Carl Bosch of I.G. Farben
became head of Ford A.G. Motor in Germany. Simultaneously, in the United
States Edsel Ford joined the board of American I.G. Farben. (See Chapter Two.)

A decade later, in
August 1938 — after Hitler had achieved power with the aid of the cartels —
Henry Ford received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, a Nazi decoration for
distinguished foreigners. The New York Times reported it was the first
time the Grand Cross had been awarded in the United States and was to
celebrate Henry Ford's 75th birthday.8

The decoration raised
a storm of criticism within Zionist circles in the U.S. Ford backed off to the
extent of publicly meeting with Rabbi Leo Franklin of Detroit to express his
sympathy for the plight of German Jews:

My acceptance of a
medal from the German people [said Ford] does not, as some people seem to
think, involve any sympathy on my part with naziism. Those who have known
me for many years realize that anything that breeds hate is repulsive to me.9

The Nazi medal issue
was picked up in a Cleveland speech by Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes.
Ickes criticized both Henry Ford and Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh for
accepting Nazi medals. The curious part of the Ickes speech, made at a
Cleveland Zionist Society banquet, was his criticism of "wealthy
Jews" and their acquisition and use of wealth:

A mistake made by a
non-Jewish millionaire reflects upon him alone, but a false step made by a
Jewish man of wealth reflects upon his whole race. This is harsh and unjust,
but it is a fact that must be faced.10

Perhaps Ickes was
tangentially referring to the roles of the Warburgs in the I.G. Farben cartel:
Warburgs were on the board of I.G. Farben in the U.S. and Germany. In 1938 the
Warburgs were being ejected by the Nazis from Germany. Other German Jews, such
as the Oppenheim bankers, made their peace with the Nazis and were granted
"honorary Aryan status."

A post-war
Congressional subcommittee investigating American support for the Nazi
military effort described the manner in which the Nazis succeeded in obtaining
U.S. technical and financial assistance as "quite fantastic.11 Among
other evidence the Committee was shown a memorandum prepared in the offices of
Ford-Werke A.G. on November 25, 1941, written by Dr. H. F. Albert to R. H.
Schmidt, then president of the board of Ford-Werke A.G. The memo cited the
advantages of having a majority of the German firm held by Ford Motor Company
in Detroit. German Ford had been able to exchange Ford parts for rubber and
critical war materials needed in 1938 and 1939 "and they would not have
been able to do that if Ford had not been owned by the United States."
Further, with a majority American interest German Ford would "more easily
be able to step in and dominate the Ford holdings throughout Europe." It
was even reported to the Committee that two top German Ford officials had been
in a bitter personal feud about who was to control Ford of England, such
"that one of them finally got up and left the room in disgust."

According to evidence
presented to the Committee, Ford-Werke A.G. was technically transformed in the
late 1930s into a German company. All vehicles and their parts were produced
in Germany, by German workers using German materials under German direction
and exported to European and overseas territories of the United States and
Great Britain. Any needed foreign raw materials, rubber and nonferrous metals,
were obtained through the American Ford Company. American influence had been
more or less converted into a supporting position (Hilfsstellung) for
the German Ford plants.

At the outbreak of
the war Ford-Werke placed itself at the disposal of the Wehrmacht for armament
production. It was assumed by the Nazis that as long as Ford-Werke A.G. had an
American majority, it would be possible to bring the remaining European Ford
companies under German influence — i.e., that of Ford-Werke A.G. — and so
execute Nazi "Greater European" policies in the Ford plants in
Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris, Budapest, Bucharest, and Copenhagen:

A majority, even if
only a small one, of Americans is essential for the transmittal of the
newest American models, as well as American production and sales methods.
With the abolition of the American majority, this advantage, as well as the
intervention of the Ford Motor Company to obtain raw materials and exports,
would be lost, and the German plant would practically only be worth its
machine capacity.12

And, of course, this
kind of strict neutrality, taking an international rather than a national
viewpoint, had earlier paid off for Ford Motor Company in the Soviet Union,
where Ford was held in high regard as the ultimate of technical and economic
efficiency to be achieved by the Stak-hanovites.

In July 1942 word
filtered back to Washington from Ford of France about Ford's activities on
behalf of the German war effort in Europe. The incriminating information was
promptly buried and even today only part of the known documentation can be
traced in Washington.

We do know, however,
that the U.S. Consul General in Algeria had possession of a letter from
Maurice Dollfuss of French Ford — who claimed to be the first Frenchman to go
to Berlin after the fall of France — to Edsel Ford about a plan by which Ford
Motor could contribute to the Nazi war effort. French Ford was able to produce
20 trucks a day for the Wehrmacht, which [wrote Dollfuss] is better than,

... our less
fortunate French competitors are doing. The reason is that our trucks are in
very large demand by the German authorities and I believe that as long as
the war goes on and at least for some period of time, all that we shall
produce will be taken by the German authorities .... I will satisfy myself
by telling you that... the attitude you have taken, together with your
father, of strict neutrality, has been an invaluable asset for the
production of your companies in Europe.13

Dollfuss disclosed
that profits from this German business were already 1.6 million francs, and
net profits for 1941 were no less than 58,000,000 francs — because the
Germans paid promptly for Ford's output. On receipt of this news Edsel Ford
cabled:

Delighted to hear
you are making progress. Your letters most interesting. Fully realize great
handicap you are working under. Hope you and family well. Regards.

Although there is
evidence that European plants owned by Wall Street interests were not bombed
by the U.S. Air Force in World War II, this restriction apparently did not
reach the British Bombing Command. In March 1942 the Royal Air Force bombed
the Ford plant at Poissy, France. A subsequent letter from Edsel Ford to Ford
General Manager Sorenson about this RAF raid commented, "Photographs of
the plant on fire were published in American newspapers but fortunately no
reference was made to the Ford Motor Company.15 In any event, the Vichy
government paid Ford Motor Company 38 million francs as compensation for
damage done to the Poissy plant. This was not reported in the U.S. press and
would hardly be appreciated by those Americans at war with Naziism. Dubois
asserts that these private messages from Ford in Europe were passed to
Edsel Ford by Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long. This was the
same Secretary Long who one year later suppressed private messages
through the State Department concerning the extermination of Jews in Europe.
16 Disclosure of those messages conceivably could have been used to assist
those desperate people.

A U.S. Air Force
bombing intelligence report written in 1943 noted that,

Principal wartime
activities [of the Ford plant] are probably manufacture of light trucks and
of spare parts for all the Ford trucks and cars in service in Axis Europe
(including captured Russian Molotovs).16

The Russian Molotovs
were of course manufactured by the Ford-built works at Gorki, Russia. In
France during the war, passenger automobile production was entirely replaced
by military vehicles and for this purpose three large additional buildings
were added to the Poissy factory. The main building contained about 500
machine tools, "all imported from the United States and including a fair
sprinkling of the more complex types, such as Gleason gear cutters, Bullard
automatics and Ingersoll borers.17

Ford also extended
its wartime activities into North Africa. In December 1941 a new Ford Company,
Ford-Afrique, was registered in France and granted all the rights of the
former Ford Motor Company, Ltd. of England in Algeria, Tunisia, French
Morocco, French Equatorial, and French West Africa. North Africa was not
accessible to British Ford so this new Ford Company — registered in
German-occupied France — was organized to fill the gap. The directors were
pro-Nazi and included Maurice Dollfuss (Edsel Ford's correspondent) and Roger
Messis (described by the U.S. Algiers Consul General as "known to this
office by repute as unscrupulous, is stated to be a 100 percent
pro-German")18

The U.S. Consul
General also reported that propaganda was common in Algiers about

... the
collaboration of French-German-American capital and the questionable
sincerity of the American war effort, [there] is already pointing an
accusing finger at a transaction Which has been for long a subject of
discussion in commercial circles.19

In brief, there is
documentary evidence that Ford Motor Company worked on both sides of World War
II. If the Nazi industrialists brought to trial at Nuremburg were guilty of
crimes against mankind, then so must be their fellow collaborators in the Ford
family, Henry and Edsel Ford. However, the Ford story was concealed by
Washington — apparently like almost everything else that could touch upon the
name and sustenance of the Wall Street financial elite.